Friday, December 15, 2006

Sun, not snow, poem

Where I live, we don’t have a “white” Christmas with a snowy landscape. It’s Texas and it’s generally sunny with brown lawns and near 80 degrees tomorrow! So, although I enjoy traditional Christmas rhymes and songs about our “winter wonderland,” we have to acknowledge that there are many places that don’t look like a Currier and Ives lithograph this time of year. So I’m always on the lookout for poems that feature the holiday with a twist. Here’s one of my favorites from Lee Bennett Hopkins’ anthology, Ring Out, Wild Bells.

Sunflakesby Frank Asch

If sunlight fell like snowflakes,gleaming yellow and so bright,we could build a sunman,we could have a sunball fight,we could watch the sunflakesdrifting in the sky.We could go sleighingin the middle of Julythrough sundrifts and sunbanks,we could ride a sunmobile,and we could touch sunflakes--I wonder how they’d feel.

from Ring Out, Wild Bells collected by Lee Bennett Hopkins

*Just for fun, read the poem aloud and invite children to chime in on the word, “sun” wherever it appears in the poem—- to emphasize the contrast between the “sun” words and the usual “snow” images.

2 comments:

Catherine Sjostedt
said...

I have used this with lots of classes of children, usually K. I made a vibrant drawn & laminated sun, taped to a paint stirrer, so even pre-readers can enjoy shouting (or whispering) when the prompt is raised.

About Me

Sylvia Vardell is a professor and author of the ALA bestseller POETRY ALOUD HERE, also POETRY PEOPLE, CHILDREN'S LITERATURE IN ACTION, and the co-editor of THE POETRY FRIDAY ANTHOLOGY series (for K-5 and for 6-8), as well as the first digital anthologies of poetry for young people, the POETRY TAG TIME series-- all in collaboration with poet Janet Wong. Vardell is also the poetry columnist for ALA’s BOOK LINKS magazine. A frequent speaker at conferences, Vardell chaired the NCTE Poetry Award committee and has served as a consultant to the Poetry Foundation.